Ethiopia: Multiple Use Water Improvements project launched

Robel Lambisso WASH Director (left) and MWA Chair at World Vision, Greig Jansen (right). Photo: newbusinessethiopia.com

The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation (TCCAF) and its partners have launched the Replenish Africa Initiative’s (RAIN) Multiple Use Water Improvements project in Ethiopia. This one-year project will benefit 73,400 rural citizens, including 22,000 school children living in seven rural woredas (districts) of three Ethiopian regions.  It will support water supply improvements and multiple uses of water (MUS); improve water access, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in schools, institutions, and households; and empower women through water-related entrepreneurship.

TCCAF is providing US$ 4 million to the project, which is being implemented in partnership with the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation (CNHF) and Millennium Water Alliance (MWA), Catholic Relief Services (CRS), WaterAid and World Vision. The project builds on the MWA’s  existing US$ 13 million CNHF programme that is being implemented in 25 woredas in 4 regions.

The TCCAF project can benefit from the related Multiple Use Services through Rainwater Harvesting (MUStRAIN) pilot project (2011-2013) in Dire Dawa. Funded through the Dutch Partners for Water programme, this project focuses on the exploitation of sand rivers for domestic, livestock and small-scale irrigation through integrated approaches that take account of multiple water needs. The Amsterdam-based RAIN Foundation is implementing this pilot project in partnership with the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, RiPPLE Ethiopia, the Hararghe Catholic Secretariat (HCS) and other local  stakeholders.

The launch of the TCCAF RAIN Multiple Use Water Improvements project took place on  12 April 2013 in Addis Ababa, on the sidelines of IRC’s Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery symposium.

The  Coca-Cola Africa Foundation’s 6-year RAIN programme (2010-2015) aims to provide at least 2 million Africans with access to clean water by 2015. The US$ 30 million that Coca-Cola has committed towards RAIN seems generous but amounts to just 0.75%  of  the company’s US$ 4 billion annual budget for marketing in 2013 and less than 7% of its US$ 440 million sponsorship deal with FIFA (2005-2012).

Related news:

• Counting how many Ethiopians lack decent water and sanitation, IRC, 08 Apr 2013
• Ethiopia: rush to achieve water and sanitation for all by 2015, E-Source, 24 Jul 2012

Related web sites:

• The Coca-Cola Foundation - Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN)
• Multiple Use water Services Group
• Millennium Water Alliance Program – Ethiopia
• IRC – Ethiopia country programme

Source: MWA, 12 Apr 2013 ; New Business Ethiopia, 13 Apr 2013

Counting how many Ethiopians lack decent water and sanitation

Addis Ababa – 8 April 2013. Providing universal access to water and sanitation, the goal of the Ethiopian Government, is a huge effort that is transforming lives and the economy. Behind efforts to improve service delivery – building new communal water systems, repairing broken pumps, encouraging households to improve their family wells and latrines – are monitoring systems, data and statistics. Reliable data are vital for investments to be made in the right places and the correct policy decisions are taken. Should limited public finance be directed to maintaining and repairing existing water supply systems, or to new construction, for example.

The recently completed National WASH Inventory has been a major initiative to better monitor the performance of the water and sanitation sector in Ethiopia. This involved survey of over 92,000 rural water supply schemes, over 1,600 small town systems, 50,000 schools and clinics and interviews with 12 million households. The costs amounted to more than 200 million Birr (about 12 million USD). For the first time, the National WASH Inventory provides a national baseline of all water and sanitation facilities using standard methods across all regions.

Ethiopia: controversial dam puts Nile Basin collaboration on hold

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Photo: Salini Costruttori

Egypt fears a significant reduction in its share of water from the Nile when the  Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is completed in 2015. Ethiopia says its neighbour’s share of water is not in danger. An international panel of experts is due to deliver a report on the dam’s impact in May 2013.

A new book [1] published by the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food suggests there is enough water in the Nile for all 10 countries it flows through, as long as sound pro-poor water management policies are implemented.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will become Africa’s largest hydroelectric project, turning Ethiopia, with the help of Chinese funding, into a major regional exporter of electricity. A 2010 Wikileaks report revealed that Egypt and Sudan were taking drastic precautions to protect their share of Nile waters.  The two countries were building an airbase in Sudan to launch attacks on Ethiopian dams should negotiations over water rights fail.

While Egypt and Sudan are members of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) partnership, they have refused to sign the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) drafted in 2010. Both countries are reluctant to give up their rights to the bulk of the Nile’s water that they were awarded in colonial treaties.

[1] Bekele, S., Smakhtin, V., Molden, D. and Peden, D. (eds.), 2012. The Nile River Basin: Water, agriculture, governance and livelihoods. UK: Routledge. Order online:  www.routledge.com/books/details/9781849712835

Related web sites:

• Wikipedia – Nile Basin Initiative | Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
• IWMI Nile Basin and East Africa sub-regional office
• International Rivers - Ethiopia’s Dam Boom

Source:

• Water: Enough in the Nile to share, little to waste, IRIN, 16 Nov 2012
• Hannah Waddilove, Cross-border resource management: How do the Nile countries fare?, This is Africa, 15 Nov 2012

Ethiopia: rush to achieve to water and sanitation for all by 2015

The Ethiopian government has set itself an ambitious target of achieving 98.5% water coverage and 100 per cent sanitation coverage by 2015. But how realistic is this target?

Currently only 54% of Ethiopia’s 83 million people has access to an improved water source and 60 per cent to sanitation, while there is a big disparity between rural and urban coverage [1]. Some 14% of under-5 childhood deaths in 2010 was caused by diarrhoea [2].

Ethiopia estimates it will need US$ 3 billion to reach universal water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) coverage, of which US$ 1.5 billion has been pledged by the government and donors [3]. Recent commitments include a US$ 150 million World Bank loan for the Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Project (UWSSP) [4] and a US$ 100 Chinese loan for water supply in Addis Ababa, announced in November 2011 [5].

Africa: Jimmy Carter spearheads final drive to eradicate Guinea worm disease

Former US president Jimmy Carter says US$ 100 million is needed to finally eradicate Guinea worm disease. The UK has pledged a third of this amount if other donors are prepared to cough up the rest.

Dr. Donald Hopkins, vice president for Health Programs at The Carter Center, shows South Sudanese children how to prevent Guinea worm disease when they visit their local water source. Photo: Carter Center/ L. Gubb

Since the Carter Centre took up the cause in 1986, the disease has been reduced by more than 99 per cent.  The majority of the remaining cases (98%) are from South Sudan, while Mali and Ethiopia have each reported less than 10 cases so far in 2011 and there was an isolated outbreak in Chad.

In 1995 Carter personally negotiated a six-month ceasefire between northern and southern Sudan, in a successful attempt to reach remote villages where Guinea worm disease was endemic.

Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis or dracontiasis) can be prevented through heath education, the provision of cloth filters for drinking water and larvicides. The Carter Center’s goal is to stop transmission of the disease worldwide before 2015 and ensure World Health Organisation (WHO) certification within three years. This would make it the second human disease, after small pox, ever to be eradicated in human history.

Related web sites:

• Carter Center – Guinea worm
• World Health Organization – Dracunculiasis
• Wikipedia – Dracunculiasis

Related news: Health policy: global assembly approves three WASH resolutions, E-Source, 14 Jul 2011

Source: Sarah Boseley, Guardian, 05 Oct 2011 ; DFID, 05 Oct 2011

Africa: political stability and country leadership key to water and sanitation progress

Political stability has heavily influenced progress in improving access to water supply and sanitation services with low-income stable countries outperforming low-income fragile and resource-rich countries.  ”This breaks with the common perception that access to sanitation and water increases with GDP”, says Senior Financial Specialist Dominick de Waal, lead author of a new report [1] by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP).

The report, commissioned by the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW),  maps progress  in water supply and sanitation of 32 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. WSP carried out the country studies together with the African Development Bank in close partnership with UNICEF, WHO, and the 32 governments.

Ethiopia, Oromiya Region: great trek for water

For many people, access to water is a mere turn of the tap away; for Abdha Aso, a 20-year-old mother of five, it involves a four-hour round trip to a muddy pond. Only a year ago, she could reach a nearby stream in 20 minutes but it has since dried up.

The rains, which usually fall twice a year – between October and November and February and May – in the Borena zone in southern Ethiopia failed last year and this.

IRIN accompanied Abdha on one of her daily journeys. Read the full story

Ethiopian officials said they were concerned about the quality of water being consumed by the people in the pastoral areas and have provided village officials with water purification chemicals. But resources are limited and not all villages would have had access. During the peak of the drought the government deployed 210 water trucks in Oromiya.

But the escalating price of trucking water, rapidly shrinking water sources and poor roads have affected services, said the government in its Revised Humanitarian Requirements Document.

In the first half of 2011, about 50 cases of acute watery diarrhoea were reported in parts of Oromiya, according to the document. Concerns about a major outbreak because of inadequate supplies of safe water and poor hygiene remain.

Source: IRIN, 29 Jul 2011

Eastern Africa drought: seven million people in need of WASH services

Seven million people, including over 700,000 refugees are in need of waster, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services according to a United Nations report of 15 July 2011.

The drought affecting Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti is being called the worst in 50 years. UN agencies have asked for US$ 1.6 billion to pay for essential programmes in the Horn of Africa, but have only received half that amount so far.

Water trucking is still needed in the driest areas as natural water points failed to refill sufficiently. Two million people have been given better access to safe drinking water so far in 2011.

Paradoxically, some areas in Ethiopia and Somalia are expected to receive above-normal rainfall in the June to September period. This is likely to increase the risk of flooding and subsequent outbreaks of waterborne diseases.

AMCOW AfricaSan Awards 2010 Winners: Feliciano dos Santos, Takiso Achame and David Kuria

A musician and activist whose songs about using latrines and washing hands are positively influencing the hygiene practices of communities in Mozambique; a widow who has risen through her caste status to lead a campaign against open defecation in her village in Ethiopia; and a toilet entrepreneur whose innovative partnership with local authorities is changing the way public toilets in Kenyan towns are managed, are the top winners of this year’s AMCOW AfricaSan Awards.

Feliciano dos Santos. Photo: © Steven Fisch Photography / The Independent

Musician Feliciano dos Santos was announced winner of the Grassroots Champion Award for dedicating his life and his music to campaigning for better public health through clean water and adequate sanitation. Santos and his Massukos Band have been using music to inspire thousands of villagers in rural Mozambique to curb the spread of disease by adopting good hygiene practices, such as washing hands, boiling drinking water and building latrines.

Takiso Achame, a widowed member of a traditionally discriminated community in the remote village of Shashera in Southern Ethiopia, was picked for the Distinguished Woman Leader in Sanitation for her exemplary local leadership over a communal cause. Even though her community often attracts the least attention from health promoters and local leaders in terms of accessing water supply, sanitation and hygiene services including awareness, Achame has become the self-appointed champion to eliminate open defecation in her village.

David Kuria won the Public Service Award for implementing a partnership model that is delivering safe, clean and affordable sanitation to the urban poor in Kenya. His company, Ecotact, is pioneering a private-public partnership approach with local authorities, and water and sewerage utilities to build public toilet malls in urban centres and informal settlements. By demonstrating the viability of sanitation as a business, David has been able to attract more than US$1.2 Million for the construction of 40 public toilet facilities in 12 municipalities in Kenya.

The top winners were announced by the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) Task Force on Sanitation during the Africa Water Week being held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (November 22-26, 2010).

Ethiopia: “Biyo: water is love”, Somali-Italian singer discovers her roots

Saba Anglana’s album “Biyo: water is love” has risen to no. 11 in the October 2010 European World Music Charts. For her album, the Somali-Italian singer went in search of her roots in Ethiopia, home of her maternal grandparents. She travelled to Addis Ababa where some of her relatives still live and to the Oromo Valley in the south. There she found the inspiration for her album: the procession of women and children in their early morning journey to collect water. Her album begins and ends with water. The opening track is “Biyo” – the Somali word for water, and the last song is “Weha”, which is water in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia.

Watch the beautifully shot clip of Biyo below. More video clips can be found on Saba Anglana’s YouTube channel. Audio clips and song lyrics from “Biyo: water is Love” are available on www.sabaanglana.com/Biyo.aspx